Shop Talk

Will Wal-Mart worker death change Black Friday?

The chaotic crowds that show up in search of rock bottom prices on Black Friday took a deadly turn this year, when a worker at Wal-Mart, Jdimytai Damour, was trampled and killed by a crowd of frenzied shoppers at one of the discount retailer’s stores in Long Island.

The shocking death made headlines around the world, showing the dark side of American consumerism. A reader identified as Life Faith wrote in to talk Shop Talk to describe the harrowing experience of being caught in the crowd at that Wal-Mart store on Friday morning:

The crowd had a strong wave-like effect and grabbed us in. i almost broke my arm trying to hold my family together. People just kept pushing and grabbing, everyone was for themselves basically, some even punching just to get through…

i do regret going that day, and it just shows me how animalistic humans can be.

In a blog posting on On Faith, Susan Thistlethwaite, a professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary, said Black Friday has now taken on a new meaning.

The term ‘Black Friday” traditionally refers to the day after Thanksgiving when shoppers start their holiday shopping and retailers start to see their balance sheets go from red ink to black ink, from deficit to profit. This year, ‘Black Friday’ has come to mean something else to me. Black Friday, I realized today, means death by consumerism.

… I have come to believe that we should honor the life of this Wal-Mart worker by thinking far more deeply about our genuinely corrupt relationship with consumerism.